It can certainly SET one if one isn't currently set. That capability is exposed 
in WMI (although not all vendors may implement the necessary API hooks).

Regards,

Michael B. Smith
Consultant and Exchange MVP
http://TheEssentialExchange.com

From: Crawford, Scott [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, March 28, 2011 3:27 PM
To: NT System Admin Issues
Subject: RE: wild wild west of small clients.

Unlikely, but malware could change the bios password.

From: Bill Humphries [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, March 28, 2011 2:17 PM
To: NT System Admin Issues
Subject: Re: wild wild west of small clients.

Yeah.  It took a couple of conversations to make her understand that this BIOS 
suddenly having a password isn't something that just happens and would only 
happen if someone took deliberate steps to make it happen.  I'll be surprised 
if anyone ever admits to tampering with it.

Jonathan Link wrote:
For some reason, when I read your story, I think of House M.D.
Clients lie.



On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 12:24 PM, Bill Humphries 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Craziness, I say.

So Friday evening I get a call from a very, very small client that is 
break/fix.  It seems that the phone system was having issues and she had 
someone from her church come out and check out the system .  But now the 
network is down and the PCs aren't connecting to the internet.  She doesn't 
really know why it is, but the church friend has her trying to login to one of 
the three workstation because he says the problem can be fixed from that PC.  I 
tell her that makes no sense and asks if she wants me to come out. She says 
Monday morning is fine.

I show up Monday and the SBS server doing DNS and DHCP and AD has a BIOS 
password set on it and isn't booting into windows.  I open it up, change 
jumpers and erase the password.  Everything up now.

No one has any idea how a BIOS password was set.  Her church friend did tell 
her she should contact ATT and get a new DSL modem because the new ones will 
increase speed by several times and the yellowing of the plastic enclosures of 
the AVAYA cards means her cards are going bad.  She claims the closet with SBS 
is always locked, but I don't think it has ever been locked when I was there.

Happy Monday, all.

~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~
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